Fire crews are on alert for a bush fire burning in Bunbury, a city south of Perth. The blaze has been contained but is not yet under control.
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00:00Crews have been working overnight to contain a blaze which is not yet controlled in the
00:08southwest of WA, just near Bunbury.
00:11Now where I'm standing at the moment is the Incident Control Centre and to the west of
00:16me is the local prison.
00:19Now the fire overnight did come close to the exterior fences of the prison.
00:25Fire crews were both inside and outside the walls of the prison to make sure that they
00:31could bring that blaze, contain that blaze.
00:35Now from what I've been told, as well as the Bunbury prison being under threat, it also
00:40included the Bunbury Airport which is just to the north of me.
00:45The airport was shut down overnight but this morning it has been reopened from fire crews
00:52working tirelessly overnight.
00:54Now no prisoners were evacuated last night from the Bunbury prison because of the fire
01:00crews being able to maintain those fire lines throughout the night.
01:05I spoke earlier to the incident control officer who is managing this area and he told me that
01:12because of the hard efforts of the crews that have come from not just Bunbury but from other
01:18communities around the southwest that they were able to bring the blaze, contain the
01:24blaze but it's not yet controlled.
01:26Take a listen.
01:27At one point the prison had become under threat from fire.
01:31Our crews worked really hard on the outside of the fire and we also had crews inside the
01:36prison itself and they worked really hard to contain the fire on the outside.
01:42There was embers flying over the prison but due to all the hard work from all the fire
01:45crews we managed to get away with any issues there at all.
01:49Conditions today are hot and windy.
01:53Fire crews today, what they're worried about is being faced with a strong south easterly.
01:58Now from what I can gather the blaze has burnt through around 50 hectares of bushland between
02:06the Bunbury prison and the Bunbury Airport.
02:09Now because of the smoke and the embers crews are monitoring it very very closely.
02:15As mentioned where I'm standing at the moment at the incident control centre they have been
02:20trying to map out those areas, those major areas of concern that they're going to be
02:24really focusing on today.
02:27In case of a flare up I did ask if the Bunbury prisoners would have to be evacuated.
02:32They told me that it would be a logistical nightmare to get prisoners and reposition
02:37them, get them out and reposition them.
02:40So they're just monitoring those areas really really closely this morning and the rest of
02:46the day.
02:47But as you can probably hear there are water bombers, they've also got helicopters that
02:53they have got out here and so fire crews are working really really hard to control that
03:00blaze.